INTRODUCTION. 8 
take the place of quinine as a prince among tonics for debilitated 
persons. 
Nevertheless, before the subject of cure, or prevention, of 
disease by a dietary regimen, as skilfully adapted to the needs, 
and condition of patients under their several ailments, can be 
properly mastered, its alphabet of fundamental parts, and 
chemical ingredients must be diligently acquired, at all events 
in outline. Just after the same fashion with regard to our 
daily methods of speech; in order to talk correctly, so as to convey 
the full significance, and true purport of what is said, the speaker 
must first learn the grammar of sentences, and the etymology 
of words. It is true the colloquial discourse of untutored rustics 
will generally suffice to rudely express the sense of what they 
desire to convey. But this, after all, is only a hit-or-miss method, 
altogether unreliable, and not worthy of imitation. For example, 
the Devonshire rustic says: “I be that fond ov cowcumbers 
I could aight ’um to ivery meal, I could: but I niver did zee 
nobody zo daainty az yu be: yu carn’t aight nort like nobody 
else.” Again, a Devon ploughboy, sick with measles, exclaims : 
“‘Brath! whot, brath agin! Why “twas brath yisterday! 
brath tha day avore! brath tu day! an mayhap ’tweel be brath 
agin tu-morrar! I'll be darned ef I'll be keep’d ’pon brath!” 
Or, “ Poor old Mrs. Fangdin be gettin’ dotty, th’of er’ve a knaw’d 
a theng or tu in ’er lifetime, za well’s Dr. Budd, ’er ave.” 
This same art of adapting cookery to the wants of sick, and 
delicate persons was, as we learn from Dr. Thudicum’s Spirit 
of Cookery (1895), systematically treated for the first time by 
Walter Ryf, in 1669; and again in subsidy at considerable 
length by Scappi, the cook of Pope Paul the Fifth, who gave two 
hundred culinary receipts for the sick, and for the convalescent, 
instructing his pupils that if they omitted these things they 
would fail much in their duty. He therefore described how 
broths, soups, jellies, barley-water, and such foods should he 
made. He particularly advised light soups concocted of oysters, 
snails, frogs, tortoises, and turtles. 
John Evelyn likewise tells in his Acetaria (1699) : “We read 
of divers Popes, and Emperors, that had sometimes learned 
physicians for their master-cooka ; and that of old an excellent 
cook was reckon’d among the eruditi.” 
Sydney Smith, later on, in a letter to Arthur Kinglake (1837), 
advanced a proposition much to the same effect: “I am 
